Writing Lessons: Erin Somers
In our Writing Lessons series, writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Erin Somers, a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. Erin is also the editor-in-chief of Barnstorm Literary Journal, and
Chainmail Bikinis and Other Sexism in Science Fiction and Literature
If you’ve seen older issues of popular science fiction magazines—think from the 1930s to the 1960s—you’ve seen cover art of half-naked women being abducted by aliens or saved by a ‘handsome’ white dude in a spacesuit. (If you’re lucky, maybe you’ve even seen a cover with both at the
Fantasy Blog Draft Hype Week!
Over the past three and a half months we’ve introduced the first ever Ploughshares Fantasy Blog teams and analyzed their selections in the draft—and now it’s time to test the team-building skills of our Fantasy Blog Managers in brutal competition… But before we do that, the commissioner thought it
The Stealth Cliché
A few years ago, Rosencrans Baldwin blew my mind with his Slate essay “Somewhere a Dog Barked.” Because he was dead right: In nearly every literary novel, that phrase appears. Did I have it in my own fiction? Absolutely. Did I also have the habit of punctuating tense scenes
Roundup: We Are Family
In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. Summer is here, and it’s
How Can We Feed Our Creativity?
For songwriter Vienna Teng, the secret seems to lie in her variety of influences. While I combed through your fabulous feedback (!) on What Poetry Can Learn from Pop Music last month, I connected with Teng for my ongoing interview series, “Hey Guys, Other People Read Too!“ A Taiwanese-American songwriter, Vienna’s chamber-folk style has led her to
The Myth of the Literary Cowboy, Part 6: Save a Horse, Write a (Space) Cowboy
Over the past few months, the Myth of the Literary Cowboy has explored how and why Willie was spot on when he observed that our “heroes have always been cowboys.” White hats, singers, anti-hero gunslingers, poets, pop music subjects—the role of the cowboy is part of the collective American pop culture
The Other Typist
The Other Typist Suzanne Rindell Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, May 2013 368 pages $25.95 The Other Typist, a crime mystery nestled inside a lovely period piece, is the story of Rose Baker, a stenographer at a Manhattan police station in the early 1920s. Rose is particularly well-suited to her job:
The Lonesome Dove Problem
I have a problem: I’ve already read Lonesome Dove. And Lonesome Dove is the most totally absorbing wonderfully awesome novel on the planet. So nothing else really compares. Hence, my problem. I’ve tried to address this problem by waiting a lot of years and then reading Lonesome Dove again. I first read
The Infinite Library
“I prefer to dream that the polished surfaces feign and promise infinity . . .” —Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” You walk through the front doors of a building that resembles more a contemporary art museum than a repository of books. Instead of a librarian at a